Geoffrey D. Askew AM

Geoffrey Askew was the senior executive responsible for Security and Emergency Management for the Qantas Group of companies for 15 years until his move into strategic management and security consulting at the end of February 2009.

Following a career with the Australian Defence Force and the Victoria State Police, Geoff joined Australian Airlines in 1988 and became Head of Security for that organisation in 1991. When Qantas Airways Limited acquired Australian Airlines in 1994, he was appointed Group General Manager Security and Investigation Services for the Qantas Group of companies, reporting directly to the Chief Executive Officer. Emergency Management & Business Resilience across the group were added to his responsibilities in early 2000.

Geoff initiated several major restructures of the security, risk management and business resilience capabilities across the group and led a team of approximately 90 staff and some 1,800 contractors around the world during some of the most significant global security events ever to challenge the Qantas Group and the civil aviation industry. He was responsible for managing a budget with expenditure in excess of $200M per annum. He was also the chairman of the Qantas Group’s response to many international and domestic incidents, including ‘September 11’ in 2001, SARS, the Bali bombings, the 2004 Tsunami and many others.

He was a member of the Australian delegation to the Australian New Zealand Leadership Forum since its inception in 2004 and until his retirement from Qantas in 2009, and co-chaired the Transport Working Group, which was exploring ways to harmonise regulatory requirements for the efficient, effective and safe transportation of people and goods between Australia and New Zealand. He was also a member of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue which was examining the impact of terrorism on the foreign policy of states in the Asia Pacific region.

Geoff has been an active member of numerous Australian and State Government committees and forums, including appointment by the Attorney General to represent the Transport Sector on the Commonwealth Governments Critical Infrastructure Advisory Council, and by the New South Wales Minister for Police to represent the private sector on the Governments Security Council.

Geoff chaired the Security Committee of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (“AAPA”) in 2007/08 and the International Air Transport Association’s (“IATA”) Security Executive during its most challenging time in September 2001. He has also been an advisor to APEC’s aviation security panel of experts.

On Australia Day 2010, Geoff was appointed as a Member in the General Division of the Order Of Australia for service to the aviation industry through contributions to security policy and the development of improved crisis management programs.

Since 2009 Geoff has provided strategic advice and support to numerous government and private sector organisations.

Geoff is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, a Director of Crime Stoppers New South Wales and a member of several Advisory Boards.

Mark Bezzina

Mark has 20 years’ experience in the project management of successful, integrated security and risk management systems in the Defence, government, resources, critical infrastructure, contracting, manufacturing, retail and other sectors. Mark’s key differentiators is that he takes a pragmatic business based approach to security, risk and resilience management rather than simply a technical or theoretical perspective. This perspective has been acquired through formal master’s level business qualifications and many years’ experience as a respected senior manager in a range of sectors and organisations.

Mark has successfully project managed a significant number of information technology, construction, manufacturing, standards development, security, risk and resilience consulting project across both industry and government.

He thoroughly understands the varied approaches taken for enterprise risk management, as a result of having being responsible for the program management of the underlying standards that form the basis for modern enterprise risk management. In his role as the General Manager of Business Standards at Standards Australia, Mark was responsible for the development and maintenance of all Australian Standards and Australia’s input into International Standards related to security, business continuity and risk including both the AS/NZS 4360 and ISO 31000 series of Standards.

Mark has attained the following qualifications:

• Master of Business Administration.
• Bachelor of Business, (Management and Information Science).
• Mark is also a trained auditor and assessor.

Mark has facilitated training courses on security and risk management for regulators and commercial organisations, both within Australia and internationally for the OECD, APEC, ABAC and ASEAN Member Economies. Mark has worked with the Defence Security Authority in reviewing security risk systems, reviewed security operations and systems at the Australian Government Security Vetting Agency and conducted a review for the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department of Australia to identify needs and priorities of owners and operators of critical infrastructure with regards to risk, security and resilience management.

He was also responsible for managing the development of a lexicon of key terms used in security and security case studies for Australian multinational and international businesses, and developed and presented training courses and workshops on security risk management.

Mark sits on the ISO/IEC/ITU Strategic Advisory Group on Security, in addition to many other high-level Australian and international committees.

Glen Mattocks

Glen is a specialist and leader in the Australian IT community, and has been widely recognised for services to information security, governance, risk management and compliance. His career began within Australian intelligence and law enforcement research communities, where he led a group of local analysts working on telecommunications and cryptographic challenges of the time. This group was part of a global virtual team, which succeeded in solving previously untenable challenges. In 1998 Glen was acknowledged by the US National Security Agency and issued an award for his ground breaking services to the field.

Glen has been an active member on a number of Australian whole of government committees relating to identity and authentication, and continues to contribute through the Gatekeeper Policy Committee for PKI. He has spoken at a range of major information security related conferences and has delivered post-graduate courses on Cybercrime and IT Compliance through Australian Universities.

Glen’s speciality focus area relates to highly sensitive information environments, such as those within the Defence Intelligence and Security community and other key Commonwealth Government Departments and Agencies. He also draws upon these highly advanced information security methods to assist a range of private sector organisations seeking to protect intellectual property and competitive advantage. This has become especially critical in recent years as the threat of economic cyber-espionage has scaled upwards dramatically.

Glen has attained the following qualifications:

• Master of Business and Technology
• Graduate Diploma in Management
• Bachelor of Science
• Telecommunications and technology – miscellaneous
• Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)
• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
• Compliance Assessor – IRAP

Bill Dee

Bill previously worked for the ACCC and its predecessor for more than 20 years and within the House of Representatives Office prior to that. He has advised some of Australia’s leading companies on compliance management systems and has developed a management system to manage organizations’ corruption/fraud risks. Bill was made a Fellow and Life Member of the Australian Compliance Institute and was the Foundation President of the Association of Compliance Professionals of Australia.

Georgia Lysaght

Georgia holds a PhD in International Relations and has over a decade of experience in the fields of high-level research, training, design monitoring and evaluation, grant writing, and management. Throughout her career, Georgia has been engaged with multiple high-calibre independent and collaborative projects involving domestic and international field-work as well as deskwork.